The Man on the Hotel Room Bed
by elixia13
Summary: MulderAngst while he's on a case during Scully's abduction. Gen.


The Man on the Hotel Room Bed

Rating: PG Classification: VA Spoilers: Very basic plots/themes up to Ascension. Nothing specific.  
Summary: MulderAngst while he's on a case during Scully's abduction.  
Disclaimer: The X-Files and it's characters do not belong to me, but rather to Fox, 1013, etc. This story is also inspired by the poem "The Man on the Hotel Room Bed" by the contemporary American poet Galway Kinnell. No offense is meant to any parties, and no money is being made off of this.

"He shifts on the bed carefully, so as not to press through the first layer into the second, which is permanently sore.  
For him sleep means lying as still as possible for as long as possible thinking the worst"  
from "The Man on the Hotel Room Bed" by Galway Kinnell

Mulder clumsily runs his key card through the reader and walks into the hotel room. Dropping his bag on the floor, he moves past the bathroom, past the TV, and sinks down onto the bed. His suit hangs off him limply, rumpled, forgotten; he's been wearing it for at least two days. For the two days he's been working on the VCS case he's assigned to. Profiling another monster, pulling a woman--still alive, thank god--out of her captor's van. The local bureau agents thanked him and let him go, and his flight back will be tomorrow morning. Alone. Back to a DC with no Scully and some more fun the with the boys in profiling.

As Mulder lies there on the bed, knowing he should sleep, knowing that he hasn't slept at all in two days and precious little for the last month, he feels the tiredness settle in his body. It begins in his throat, and spreads down into his chest, his lungs, making his breathing heavy. As his heart slowly beats, the weariness spreads down his arms, into his back, his clenched stomach, his sore ribs. His legs that, all on their own in the night, dream of running, of chasing after something too far away to ever catch.

He will have to sleep. If he lies awake all night, shifting slowly through his layers of guilt, he will go mad. At least the dark madness of his nightmares fades in the morning. Most times he remembers nothing at all, sometimes just a washed-out image. A woman turned away from him, a tear sliding down her cheek. A soft, cool hand on his forehead, brushing stray hair back from his hot, dry face.

Other times a spiked, bright flash of dream comes to him while he's taking his morning shower. Water pouring onto his back, shampoo in his hair, and then the pits full of bodies, the fire, the gunshots. More than once he's ended up doubled over in his bathtub, and it disturbs him more than he's willing to admit. One day they might find him with his head cracked open, and he would never know it. He would die trapped in his nightmare, in his own hell.

If he stays away tonight, that will be one less nightmare, but one more night of lying like this, awake, on a hotel room bed, awash in the strength of his desire for times and people past. Playing his mental slide show of horrors, of the people he failed, he learns this litany of guilt like a prayer. Saying it over to prevent forgetting, he lets his mind play the images. *Love is the religion that bereaves the bereft.*

Bright copper hair gleams in the twilight of the basement office, a smile as she turns around to greet him. She reaches out to touch him with one white hand. His eyes search for hers, clinging to her gaze as though to hold her, but the image goes dark. His skin feels colder, and the light comes up slowly revealing his father. The man looks firmly at Mulder and steps forward as though to bridge the distance. But he falls away into a teeming blackness below, and the light from above becomes increasingly bright until it surrounds Mulder. He seems to be swimming in an ocean of light, and looks to his side to see his sister. Her long brown hair floats on the surface, suffused with brilliance. She giggles and steps further, deeper, a look of daring in her eyes. He reaches out to stop her, but an unseen tide sweeps her away, into the source of the brightness, away from him. The light dims, and he seems to see his mother's arms reaching up as though to hold him, but she turns away. Her hands to her face, she lets him fall.

With a harsh gasp he wakes up, in his suit, on the hotel room bed, to see the first pink of morning staining the sky. All his life, he has searched for the truth, risen each morning to pray to his faith of memory. He has held to a rope, tracing a path back to its origins, but he feels his hands going slack, his steps slowing. Slowly rising, he gathers the pain and weariness back into his core, back into the hard, sore place in his body where the fear rests. In the faint light of dawn, he can see the night of the next day already forming.


End file.
